Radiology & Imaging Articles

Ultrasound is the future. It’s even better than that: it’s the present. So say proponents Seth Koenig, Mangala Narasimhan and pioneer & innovator Paul Mayo in this month’s CHEST review. They endorse a “paradigm shift” meaning, in effect, you get professionally trained on this highly versatile, effective, and immediate-results-providing modality and integrate it into your routine [… read more]

Using the Nationwide Inpatient Sample and the national Multiple Cause-of-Death files, Wiener et al found that since the inception of CT-angiography in 1998, the number of CT-PE scans have risen 11-fold, and age-adjusted incidence of pulmonary embolism rose from 62 to 112 per 100,000 (an 81% increase). Over the same period, the mortality rate (presence of PE [… read more]

Dalteparin is a low-molecular weight heparin that, unlike enoxaparin, is safe for people with renal failure. Among 3,746 ICU patients in 6 countries, followed until hospital discharge, there was no difference in the rate of proximal deep venous thrombosis (5.1% vs 5.8%, 1′ endpoint) between once-daily dalteparin and twice-daily UFH, as detected by twice-weekly ultrasounds. [… read more]

Chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension is a “new” condition (in terms of our recognition and understanding of it), whose true prevalence, natural history, and response to therapies continue to be elucidated. Meanwhile, specialized surgical centers continually make thromboendarterectomy safer, providing definitive cures that are nothing short of miraculous for those affected by this otherwise usually fatal [… read more]

A nice pro/con soundoff between Gerard Silvestri (con) and James Jett & David Midthun (pro) over whether lung cancer screening with chest CT should be national policy, in the wake of the positive findings of the National Lung Screening Trial. Silvestri (of MUSC) argues that we don’t have a handle on the harms of screening [… read more]

How many licks does it take to get to the middle of a Tootsie Roll Pop? How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? And that other timeless mystery: How many airways do patients with COPD have, how narrowed are they, and what is the relationship between said narrowing, coexisting emphysematous destruction, [… read more]

While we were screening our heavy smokers for lung cancer with chest CTs, the Dutch and Belgians have been screening their own (in the NELSON trial, which will report results in 2015). They double-dipped their imaging data here to ask the question, how good is chest CT at identifying undiagnosed chronic obstructive pulmonary disease? 1,140 [… read more]

Resection of isolated pulmonary metastasis resulted in surprising longevity in this study by Hornbech et al. They report a series of 248 patients, 97% of whom had a complete resection of their pulmonary metastasis, following them for an average of 5 years. The five year survival rates after pulmonary metastasectomy were as follows: Colorectal cancer: [… read more]

Zhang et al pooled 20 studies that compared ultrasound, chest X-ray, or both against a reference standard (usually CT scan) for the diagnosis of pneumothorax. Chest X-ray had a pooled sensitivity of 52% and specificity 99% for diagnosis of pneumothorax. Ultrasound’s pooled sensitivity was 88% and specificity, 100%. Unsurprisingly, the accuracy of ultrasonography to diagnose [… read more]

Deppen et al report that PET-CT’s specificity for lung cancer was only 40% among 211 patients undergoing resection for presumed lung cancer at Vanderbilt in Nashville, TN, an area endemic for histoplasmosis. Twenty-two of 43 benign nodules were granulomas; most were positive on PET-CT (~60%). Ann Thorac Surg 2011;92:428-433.

Increasing urine output should reduce the risk for contrast nephropathy, as should hustling contrast metal past vulnerable Na-K-Cl transporters using loop diuretics. However, furosemide alone increases the risk for contrast nephropathy. Some hypothesized that was due to diuretic-induced hypovolemia. Briguori et al report results of REMEDIAL-II. They randomized ~300 patients at very high risk for [… read more]

Mavros et al did the heavy lifting required to review 998 studies relating in some way to atelectasis and postoperative fever. They felt only 8 of those studies deserved analysis (990 were excluded either for not reporting sufficient data, or not focusing on the question at hand). One study reported an association between atelectasis and [… read more]

Fragou et al randomized 401 ICU patients to undergo subclavian vein central line placement with guidance either by ultrasound or anatomic landmarks. All cannulations were with an infraclavicular approach. The ultrasound group had a higher success rate (100% vs 87.5%), shorter time to access and fewer number of attempts, and a lower rate of complications. [… read more]